Video Game / Full Throttle

Hell yeah!

"Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen. That's the last sensation I had before I blacked out; that thick smell of asphalt. And the first thing I saw when I woke up was her face. She said she'd fix my bike. Free. No strings attached. I should've known then that things are never that simple. Yeah, when I think of Maureen, I think of two things: asphalt... and trouble."

— Ben, the opening narration

Full Throttle is a SCUMM based LucasArts Adventure Game released in 1995, set in a futuristic world somewhat reminiscent of Mad Max and focusing on Ben Throttle, leader of the motorcycle gang "The Polecats." After unexpectedly making friends with Corley Motors CEO Malcolm Corley while resting at The Kickstand (a biker bar), he's taken out back by Corley's vice-president and confidant, Adrian Ripburger. Ripburger offers him and the Polecats a job to escort the limo to the annual shareholders meeting, but Ben declines out of pride. Ripburger has Ben knocked out by his private thugs and chucks him in a dumpster, tricking the Polecats into following along with the escort. Ben attempts pursuit to make up for lost time, expecting an ambush for his gang, but finds his bike sabotaged and brutally wrecked on the highway. When he wakes up, he finds he's in a small mechanic's shop belonging to toaster repairwoman Maureen. She offers to fix his bike for free, as a favor, and also for the pleasure of working on a bike for the first time in a long while. But Ben quickly learns that things are not so simple, as his pursuit of Ripburger and his friendship with Maureen lead him into a greater conspiracy than he realized.

The first game to be directed by Tim Schafer, Full Throttle features more of Schafer's sharp wit and love of heavy metal. It also had full voice acting and at-the-time revolutionary 3D rendering for the biker sequences. In addition, it was the only Lucas Arts game to make extensive use of licensed music, in this case by "authentic biker" metal band The Gone Jackals. While mostly an adventure game, it also splices in action-based bike fights during the driving sequences. The game is also notoriously short, even by adventure game standards, able to be completed in 4 hours even if you don't hurry. The game still has a cult following to this day.

Like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle, it got a remastered version, courtesy of Double Fine Productions, which was released in April 2017.

For the Pinball game from Heighway Pinball, click here.

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This game provides examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: Hard to think otherwise on a setting with limos and minivans moving around on hovercraft fans, not to mention the two-seater police chopper which looks a bit too much like a repurposed dinghy, but there's no evidence it's far into the future.
• Actor Allusion: If Ben tries to start his bike at the beginning of the game, he'll say "Some joker took my keys. I don't like that." The "Joker" in question is, of course, Ripburger, voiced by Mark Hamill.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: Leather, tattoos, sunglasses, beards, and heavily modified custom Harley-style bikes, with real tires in a world of hover cars. Combine this with Bad Ass Biker and it's used liberally for the entire game... save for the Cavefish, a bizarre, unspeaking cult who look like Tusken raiders and ride sleek, bright-yellow/green speed bikes.
• Angry Guard Dog: There's a guard dog at Todd's junkyard that would go after Ben if he tries to get the part he needs for his bike. Ben has to place meat in one of the empty cars and use the magnet crane to keep it up.
• Badass Biker:
  • Ben displays his badass attitude early in the game when interrogating Quohog the bartender.
    Ben: (referring to Quohog's nose ring) You know what might look better on your nose?
    Quohog: What?
    (Ben grabs Quohog by the nose ring and slams his face down on the counter)
    Ben: The bar.
  • The Vultures have several of these as members, one of whom is Maureen.
• Badass Boast: After getting his keys back from Quohog, Ben races down the highway to catch up with his crew, when he notices a random Rottwheeler trying to intercept him:
  "When I'm on the road, I'm indestructible. No one can stop me... but they try."
• Badass Preacher: Father Torque, the former leader of the Polecats, is apparently a REAL priest, or at the very least the biker equivalent of one, as he is the one performing Malcolm Corley's funeral rites during the ending.
• Bag of Spilling: Ben throws away the bizarre arsenal he accumulates in the mine road segment before jumping the gorge. As he says afterward, it was a hell of a jump and he had to get rid of extra weight.
• Bait-and-Switch: When Ben jumps onto his chopper and rides out of the crashing plane, the game does a Fade to White, cutting to a funeral, making it seem as if Ben were the deceased and being honored. It isn't until Father Torque starts talking about how the dead gave them freedom, that Ben is revealed to be one of the mourners, and the funeral is for Malcolm Corley.
• The Bartender: Quohog the bartender at The Kickstand has a large nose ring he got on a dare and apparently took an art class. Ben also hits him up for info a few times (literally hitting him the first time).
• Bittersweet Ending: Maureen rightfully inherits her father's company, and Ben and the Polecats are cleared. But Maureen must trade her free biker life for that of a restricted corporate executive, which also costs her a budding relationship with Ben, who is last seen leaving her and riding off on his bike.
• Broken Bridge: Literal example. The whole Mine Road segment involves gradually winning fights and collecting spoils to ultimately pull an Evel Knievel and jump a destroyed bridge across a canyon.
• But Now I Must Go: Realizing that Maureen taking her father's place in the boardroom means that there is no place for him in her life, Ben returns to the open road with the Polecats.
• Cane Fu: A villainous example. Ripburger, uses his cane to good use when beating Corley to death.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: Ben was knocked out and his unconscious body thrown in the dumpster out back. Then the player can kick the dumpster, thus violating about every single safety warning on the dumpster within the first couple minutes of gameplay.
• Car Fu: The Corley Derby obviously. Also, Ripburger hijacks a truck and attempts to run down Ben and Maureen during the climax
• Cargo Concealment Caper: After being suitably bribed, Emmett agrees to smuggle Ben through the police roadblocks searching for him. Ben is hidden in the truck's engine compartment, while his motorbike is buried in the truck's cargo of concentrated fertilizer powder — which Emmett assures him no-one will want to search through.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Ripburger, who is so obvious he should have a handlebar mustache to twirl. Corley isn't fooled one bit. What he isn't prepared for is the degree to which Ripburger is willing to get his own hands dirty.
• Chain Pain: One of the Vultures, Michael, uses a chain as his signature weapon. Ben can acquire one after defeating him, which becomes useful when fending off other bikers.
• Chainsaw Good: One of the weapons used on the road. It is reasonably a One-Hit Kill. Unfortunately, you don't start with it, and it's a One-Hit Kill for you too. And the one enemy it would make sense to use it on, the Cavefish, renders it moot.
  You like choppers, huh? How 'bout this chopper?
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The tire iron. A couple of early puzzles, a starter weapon on the Mine Road... and then it's back for the finale. One could almost call it as Ben's signature tool and weapon.
• Clear My Name: About halfway through the plot, Ben and the Polecats are framed for Malcolm Corley's murder.
• Co-Dragons: Nestor, the smart guy, and Bolus, the brute.
• Cool Car: The game focuses mostly on bikes, but there's a few sweet cars around, notably Corley's limo and the demolition derby cars, but especially Ripburger's stolen truck, which for some reason includes machine guns.
• Cool Old Guy: Father Torque; but you can't beat Malcolm Corley.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Adrian Ripburger. See also Evil Chancellor.
• Cozy Catastrophe: Implied, even lampshaded, though never really stated. The "Apocalypse" really just got rid of all the annoying authority figures so everyone could ride around on motorcycles looking badass. When asked about it, though, creator Tim Schafer denied that the game takes place after a nuclear holocaust, and that "Chitlins, Whiskey, and Skirt" was just a song composer Peter McConnell worked on that the team liked.
• Credits Gag: Many. Top marks goes to listing the crew's cats, an entire "Special Biker Haiku Section", and toy bunnies scampering into the sunset.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: While not outright unusual, Ripburger beating Corley to death with his cane is certainly quite cruel. Especially taking how much pleasure he took when doing the deed into account.
• Death by Irony: Malcolm Corley is beaten to death by Ripburger. A Corley employee later tells Ben this is ironic because the Corley Motors slogan is "Can't beat a Corley." During the finale, these are the last words Ripburger sees, hanging on for dear life above the Poyahoga Gorge — a license plate printed with the slogan which snaps off under his weight. He might have quite literally beaten an old man, but he didn't get away with it, not against Malcolm Corley's (illegitimate) daughter and heir and her Corley-riding friend.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you take too long to solve any of the endgame puzzles, the game will finish off with everyone dying a rather brutal death (in a majority of cases, falling into the ravine). However, every time this happens, the screen will then black out, as we hear Ben quite casually say something like "oops, let's try that again," where the game then cuts back to the beginning of the sequence for another chance. Aside from having to start the puzzle from the beginning, there is zero penalty for "dying." This would make sense as Ben is the narrator and he's detailing the events that unfolded before the end of the game.
• Disney Villain Death: At the end of the game, Ripburger falls to his death in the gorge after the license plate to which he was clinging snaps loose.
• Down in the Dumps: Maureen's neighbor Todd owns a junkyard that Ben can use to get a new fork for his bike. Though it has a guard dog.
• Engineered Public Confession: Ben has the pictures of Ripburger gleefully murdering Malcolm Corley play during Ripburger's speech to the shareholders. It takes a few moments, and several photos, before Ripburger notices the gasps of horror and turns to see what's being projected on the screen behind him.
• Epic Flail: One of the weapons held by the bikers, with the ball shaped liked a skull, no less!
• Establishing Character Moment: Ben casually jumping his bike over the roof of Corley's limo to get in front of it. Once gameplay starts, Ben gets another badass moment when the first puzzle of the game (trying to find his keys) is solved by grabbing the bartender's nose ring and slamming his face down on the bar, showing that this isn't going to be your typical graphic adventure.
• Exact Words:
  • When you first meet Maureen, she says you could call her shop a Corley facility (because she's Corley's daughter). She also prefers to call it a "renegade" operation rather than an illegitimate one (because she's Corley's illegitimate daughter)
  • Malcolm tells Ripburger that he's only around because he's waiting for Malcolm to die to take over the company. Ripburger expresses shock and says he's not waiting for Malcolm to die. No, he's not going to wait for Malcolm to die.
  • Ripburger adopts the same tactic when trying to recruit Ben, saying that the polecats will find out his plan if they follow him. He doesn't say it's a plan they would approve of.
• Eyes Always Shut: Most characters' eyes are squinted, narrowed and in shadow for the majority of their appearance on-screen. The remastered version's commentary track says it was a deliberate effort to channel Clint Eastwood's squint (and just so happened to be easier to animate, particularly when dealing with the pixel art of the original release).
• Faking the Dead: A mission at the end of the game requires that Ben and Maureen fake their own deaths to Ripburger in order to lure him out of hiding.
• False Reassurance: Ripburger sneaks a hint about his plans in the opening scene. To his credit, his tone sounds more like 'indignant denial' than Sarcastic Confession.
  Corley: I know your plan, Ripburger. You're waiting for me to die so you can take over my company!
  Ripburger: (chuckling) Sir, that's horrible... I am not waiting for you to die!
  • Note that this is also Exact Words: Ripburger isn't waiting for anything!
• Faux Affably Evil: Ripburger acts courteous even when he's killing Malcolm. He also claims that he mourned Malcolm's death during his lecture.
• Felony Misdemeanor: "He wants to start making minivans. You understand me? MINIVANS!" Sounds like this, but Corley Motors is the last dedicated motorcycle manufacturer in the country, and them switching to the family vehicle market would be a death sentence for biker culture.
• Five-Finger Discount: A puzzle toward the end of the game requires you to distract a souvenir shop clerk and steal a box of wind-up bunnies.
• Five-Finger Fillet: Emmett is playing this when he appears at the Kickstand, though he's not very good. In a hidden minigame, Ben can show him how it's done.
• Funeral Cut: If Ben suceeds into jumping on his bike and escape from the truck explosion, it cuts to a funeral. It first seems that it's Ben's but actually it's Corley's, who was killed at the beginning of the game.
• Gas Siphoning: An early puzzle to steal gas from the local gas tower is actually solved by luring the police to the tower to investigate the attempted theft, then siphoning the gas from their hoversled.
• Genius Bruiser: Several of those bikers are both very badass and frighteningly smart people, not least Ben.
• Girly Run: Ben, which is probably why he's always on a Corley motorcycle.
• Giving Them the Strip: Miranda escapes from Bolus by slipping out of her vest.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: The Cavefish use special goggles to compensate for their cave blindness. Their display includes a highlighted route, threat and target detectors, and an indicator of the location of their secret base.
• A Handful for an Eye: You can throw caustic fertilizer in the eyes of goggle-less bikers during the bike combat section.
• Heroic Bastard: According to Maureen, Malcolm Corley had her out of wedlock and kept her as his secret.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Malcolm Corley is dedicated to his product and his workers, in contrast to his Vice-President, Ripburger, who would pursue profits by outsourcing labour, increasing automation, and switching to more profitable family vehicles. Maureen Corley steps into her father's shoes in the end, committing to expanding services for workers.
• Immoral Journalist: Downplayed by the reporter Miranda: she is not actively malicious, but when she sees a potential tragedy, her first instinct is to write a story about it and send it in to her editor, and only then does she consider helping the victims. For example, while she does administer first aid to Ben after he crashes his bike early in the game, she does so only after shooting a bunch of photos of his unconscious body. Later on, when she overhears that Malcolm Corley is "headed for an ambush", she stakes out in the bushes with a camera to document said ambush instead of warning him, leading to his death (though she manages to capture the murder on film, which then becomes the main MacGuffin of the plot).
• Incendiary Exponent: Lampshaded and parodied:
  Announcer: It's the Unknown Avenger — and he's on fire! Well, let's give him a hand, folks. That looks painful!
  Crowd: (cheers, conspicuously fails to help the man running around on fire in the arena portion of a stadium)
  • If it goes on long enough, the announcer has other lines about it.
    Announcer: This is your moment to shine!
    Announcer: We really should put him out — but what a show, huh?
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Ben's sabotage of Ripburger's presentation is perfectly timed to undermine what Ripburger's saying at the time: his "vision for Corley Motors" is the company burning away to nothing (as Ben sets the projector on fire) and his "more aggressive corporate strategy" is him beating Malcolm to death (as Ben switches out the slideshow with damning evidence).
• Intrepid Reporter: Miranda; downplayed in that she feels ashamed when she shows signs of humanity.
• Irony: As noted above, Malcolm Corley, whose company's slogan is "Can't Beat A Corley", dies being spanked to death by Ripburger.
• Karmic Death: The crux of Ripburger's plan is his savage beating of Malcolm Corley. In the game's finale, Ripburger falls to his death when, after attempting to kill the last of the Corley family and failing miserably, the license plate (belonging to a huge truck) he's holding on to snaps off of the truck. The plate bears the company slogan, "Can't Beat A Corley".
• The Killjoy: Ripburger to Malcolm. The latter loves biking and bikers, but the former is only interested in business, and it's exemplified when Ripburger spoils the mood during the Noodle Incident retelling.
• Last of His Kind: Ben mentions that Corley is the last dedicated bike manufacturer around, everyone else having switched to the more profitable car and family vehicle industry.
• Last Villain Stand: See the Taking You With Me section below.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A few times. One funny instance is when Ben yells at Ripburger, "You're going to kill all of us!" Ripburger replies, "Shhh, Ben, you'll ruin the ending!" Which is sort of a Red Herring.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The bartender warns Ben that Ripburger and his goons are planning to do this to him. They did it by loosening the screws on his bike so the front wheel would fall off while he was on the road. Thankfully, Miranda finds him barely conscious on the roadside and brings him to Maureen to get him patched up.
• Mega Manning: Defeating an enemy in the Old Mine Road sequence grants you their weapon, and different enemies are vulnerable to different weapons - for instance, the flail can be used to disarm a chain-user. Two weapons are needed to unlock puzzle-solving items; the rest are just for general bike combat.
• Mega-Maw Maneuver: In the final sequence, the Vultures' Jumbo Cargo Transport swallows Ripburger's semi.
• Mistaken for Murderer: Ben is accused of killing Malcolm Corley thanks to Ripburger. Unfortunately for Ben, Corley's daughter Maureen also believes he did it and tries to have him drawn and quartered via motorcycle.
• Motorcycle Jousting: Occurs as a minigame on the Old Mine Roads: riding up next to an enemy biker and beating on them until one of you crashes lets you take their weapon, several of which are needed for puzzles.
• Mythology Gag: Because this is a LucasArts game, there's quite a few.
  • The Vultures fought on the Mine Road are Wendy, Razor, Michael and Sid from Maniac Mansion.
  • The stadium has a poster of skull and crossbones with Max's head.
  • As a subsidiary of Lucasfilm, there's a few Star Wars Shout Outs:
    • Miranda: "Help me, Ben, you're my only hope!" Taken a step further in the remaster; the trophy you get for passing that milestone in the story has the name "A New Hope".
    • Emmet has a tattoo of the Imperial insignia on his upper arm.
    • One of the mooks fought on Mine Road has a tattoo of the Rebel Alliance on his forehead.
    • The Cavefish are basically just Tusken Raiders but with Cool Bikes, can actually talk and have all sorts of high-tech gadgets.
    • The left-most driver at the beginning of the demolition derby bears no resemblance whatsoever to George Lucas. Nope. Nosiree...
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Ripburger is not the name of a guy you should take financial advice from, let alone put as your second in command for your company or let handle your security when you are taking a long road trip with just him and his flunkies and the biker gang he hired. Corley mainly kept him around because of Ripburger's business savvy and killer instinct, but always disliked the man immensely.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Malcolm Corley is based on Malcolm Forbes, a multibillionaire who had a taste for choppers (and leather, for that matter).
• No Fair Cheating: Most Mine Road fights can be cheated past, but the Cavefish will only drop their thermal goggles if knocked out with the two-by-four — using the cheat counts as defeating them with another weapon, which leads to them activating their Self-Destruct Mechanism and taking their goggles with them.
• No Full Name Given: Ben's last name is never given during the game. The manual calls him Ben Whatsisname, (though that's probably a joke) while Tim Schafer says his last name is Throttle.
• Noodle Incident: During the opening cutscene, Malcolm and the Polecats are all laughing together about a story that the former just told, but isn't heard by the player.
  Ben: But Malcolm, isn't that illegal?
  Malcolm: Not back then, it wasn't!
  (The bar erupts into laughter.)
• No Romantic Resolution: With Maureen taking over Corley Motors, Ben realizes that a relationship with her is impossible, leaving off riding into the sunset.
• Obviously Evil: Ripburger, with his low, gloating voice. Doesn't help that he shares his voice actor with The Joker (although the two characters manage to sound very little alike).
• Opening Monologue: Ben narrates the intro himself. "Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen."
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Exploited, the villains actually see through it, but this was planned in order to fake the characters' deaths.
• Parental Abandonment: Maureen's father abandoned her when she was quite young, leaving her too depressed to work on anything but toasters up until the events of the game. Eventually, it's revealed that her father is Malcolm Corley, and while he used to maintain a strong relationship with his daughter, he eventually cut it off at Ripburger's advice since she was an illegitimate child.
• Perma-Stubble: Ben is beardless but has a heavy five-o'clock shadow.
• Pixel Hunt: The rock-kicking puzzle near the end — also counts for That One Level for its insanity. In the commentary, Tim Schafer described getting a lot of flak about the puzzle, and being genuinely surprised that so many people did not figure out that the crack was at eye level for a 4-year-old, and therefore much shorter, Maureen.
• Private Eye Monologue: The quote at the top of the page that opens the game.
• Purposely Overpowered: Although the Mine Road fights have the appearance of an action fighting game, it can be treated as more of a puzzle. The right items will one-shot the right targets, and in some cases, this is the only way to get what you need. In particular, the chainsaw stands out as one-shotting every opponent except the Cavefish (who is one-shotted by the 2x4) and the Vulture who boosts away (who is one-shotted by the chain).
• Put on a Bus: Miranda. She asks you to find her publisher, and is never heard from again.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking:
  • Both Polecats leaders, main character Ben and the semi-retired Father Torque, are hard as nails and Ben is by far the toughest mofo in the game.
  • Ripburger turns out to be a lot more dangerous than you'd expect from a businessman. Granted, he never fights anyone hand to hand and relies on sneak attacks and guns, but still.
• Rated M for Manly: Unusual for a point-and-click adventure, you play a musclebound tough guy in riding leathers who rides a custom bike and punches his way through the near-future American Southwest, wielding tire irons and chainsaws, accompanied by a hard rock soundtrack from a real-life biker band. Your interface includes options include the usual Look, Talk, and Pick Up/Use, but not only can Use also be Punch, the fourth default option is Kick.
• Retired Badass:
  • Malcolm Corley seems to have been quite a biker in his youth, considering that he apparently managed to impress Ben with his stories of the old days. He's retired from riding, but the fact that he refuses to retire as head of the company he founded, the last motorcycle manufacturer in the country, is admired even by Ben and his gang of Badass Bikers.
  • Father Torque, the former leader of the Polecats. He even finds retirement a bit boring and can be found riding around on the Old Mine Road looking for trouble.
• Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony: At the shareholder's meeting, Ripburger shows a picture of him and Malcolm at one for Corley Motors, both of them visibly younger.
• Riding into the Sunset: Twice!
• Shout-Out:
  • The game world in general is a love letter to Mad Max and its sequels, with bikers battling their way across a Used Future in the high desert.
  • Todd tells you to "get your greasy, oily, leather-wearing carcass off my property," a la movie gangster Johnny from Home Alone.
  • If you try to speak with Todd repeatedly, Ben will eventually say "Candygram," just like Saturday Night Live's Land Shark who also tried to talk his way through locked doors.
• Smug Snake: Ripburger takes the art of false bonhomie to a new level.
• Spiritual Successor: Tim Schafer's Brütal Legend bears some visual similarities to this one, though Brütal Legend is focused entirely on heavy metal. The style of the bikes and cars are almost identical across both games (though no hovercars in Brütal Legend), right down to the giant, spindly forks and a huge Ed "Big Daddy" Roth-style fan of rear pipes and blowers (also seen on the Bone Wagon in Grim Fandango).
• Spoiler Cover: The box and the disc both depict the final player-guided moment of the game. Of course, it's almost impossible to guess the context of the shot, other than that Ben rides away from an explosion.
• Standard Snippet: "Ride of the Valkyries" plays while clearing the minefield, featuring a fantastic contradiction between full orchestral and cheap plinky-plonk versions.
• The Stinger: The bunnies get one final hurrah after the credits. Technically counts as a Brick Joke as well, as they are introduced in a similar context earlier in the story, albeit to a much less victorious end. There's even a trophy in the remaster for seeing it.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Multiple crashes and flaming wrecks result in massive explosions. Deliberately exploited to distract Ripburger with a double bluff, making him think Ben and Maureen's attempt to infiltrate the Corley Motors demolition derby has failed when it's really just begun.
• Stylistic Suck: "Increased Chances" or "Chitlins, Whiskey, and Skirts," the deliberately-terrible country song in a game that loves its rock music, listened to by an unpleasant and thieving redneck, is hilarious in all the best ways, from the either lacking or lazy rhyme schemes, to the subject matter (thanking God for the nuclear apocalypse because the mass death makes his crush marginally more likely to requite his affections, shoe-horning in all the "standard country music" tropes except a train), to the slow sickly tune, to the utterly unnecessary second verse entirely consisting of yodeling. The remake had it playing in the pause screen bar.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Ben knows that Maureen needs all of her time focused on the company, and that they don't have a ton in common besides motorbikes anyway. While there's definitely a spark between them — Maureen sighs when she sees Ben is gone — for Corley Motors to survive, Maureen needs to be focused on it, not romance.
• Swallowed a Fly: Ben chats with his old biker gang leader, Father Torque, while they're both in the middle of riding. Exhausting all conversation trees will cause Torque to say that he can't talk anymore because he's eating too many bugs.
• Tabletop RPG: A fan created a Fudge-based ruleset to play FT in tabletop format.
• Taking You with Me: After Ben exposes Ripburger, Rip flees in a stolen semi, then catches up with Ben and Mo for a Last Villain Stand, attempting to drive them off of Poyahoga Gorge.
• Tempting Fate:
  • When Ben gets on his bike at the beginning of the game, he says: "When I'm on the road, I'm indestructible. No one can stop me". Shortly afterwards, his bike's front wheel comes off, and he crashes.
  • When Nestor and Bolus assumed they have killed Ben, Nestor begins gloating about their reward. Unfortunately for the two their current derby car sprang a fuel leak, and the just happen to be close to a very large fire.
• Terrible Trio: Adrian Ripburger and his mooks, Nestor and Bolus.
• Too Dumb to Live: You can actually be this yourself if, just before Ripburger's death, you decide to start the car engine, which leads to an immediate player death scene. Of course, since Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, the sequence will just restart if you do this.
• Treacherous Advisor: Even Malcolm doesn't trust Ripburger, a particularly egregious fact considering that the two of them have worked together since the Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony! So it comes as no shock when Ripburger bludgeons the old guy to death with his cane and takes over his company by force. Notably, the game is one of the few uses of this trope that bothers explaining WHY anyone would keep someone like Ripburger around:
  Malcolm: You know I've never liked you, Rip... but you have business know-how and killer instincts that I respect.
• Vehicular Combat: A major part of gameplay and the story, as part of the game's pseudo-Mad Max setting. The roads are sufficiently dangerous that trucks may be equipped with machine guns, and the biker gangs seek each other out to pick fights with improvised weapons on the old mine roads. One of the most popular sporting events is a kind of bumper cars derby with real cars held at Corley Motors HQ, where the audience cheers as armored cars ram into each other and explode.
• Video Will: Malcolm left an audiotape will. Playing it at the shareholders' meeting, along with the photos of his murder, is a major plot point.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Ripburger is just the upstanding chief executive of Corley Motors, and no one feels worse about Malcolm's death than he does. Twisting the knife, he pins the blame on the Polecats, who Corley had just befriended. Ben and company take great pleasure in turning his press conference into an Engineered Public Confession.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: While the individual locations are obviously made up, the general area the game takes place in is likely the Colorado Plateau, if the impressive arid landscapes are anything to go by.
• Wrench Wench: Maureen is an expert when it comes to repairing motorcycles. It comes in handy when she runs Corley Motors, as she's very much in touch with what it takes to manufacture them, too.

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